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Awards ceremony on May 19 to honor community service partnerships and faculty who bring volunteerism into curriculum

The Office of Public Affairs and the Haas Center for Public Service will hold the third annual Community Partnership and Volunteer Service Awards Luncheon on Friday, May 19. This year's Community Partnership Awards will honor the Foundation for a College Education, Planting for the Second Hundred Years and Ravenswood Family Health Center. The volunteer service awards will be given to Donald Barr, an associate teaching professor of sociology and human biology, and Law School Professor Michael Wald.

The Community Partnership Awards recognize programs that benefit the local community and represent successful community partnerships between Stanford and its neighbors. "The most difficult part of the award process is narrowing down all of the amazing programs which have been nominated to just a few winners," said Jean McCown, university director of community relations. "This year's award-winning programs touch thousands of lives. We hope recognizing them with this award will help further the community's understanding of and support for what they are accomplishing."

Barr and Wald will receive the Miriam Aaron Roland Volunteer Service Prize, which recognizes Stanford faculty members who engage and involve students in integrating academic scholarship with significant and meaningful volunteer service. The Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford awards the Roland Prize, which was endowed in 2004 by alumna Miriam Roland of Montreal, Canada.

Barr, also a staff physician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, founded the Human Biology Program's health-policy curriculum and its service-learning requirement, which engages undergraduate students in deep and genuine structured volunteer service in the community. For the past five years, Barr has chaired the board of directors of the Community Working Group, a network of local nonprofit, government and religious organizations that is committed to the creation of the Opportunity Center of the Midpeninsula. The center, currently under construction, will provide housing and comprehensive services to the midpeninsula's homeless.

Wald, the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, has spent the past 40 years providing leadership for the integration of a public-service curriculum and direct experience into the training of Stanford Law School graduates. Wald established the first public interest legal clinic and the first externship program to serve the needs of the poor and most vulnerable in society.

More about the 2006 Community Partnership Award winners:

The Foundation for a College Education (FCE) was founded in 1995 to promote college access for students who traditionally have been underrepresented in higher education. Located in East Palo Alto, FCE aims to increase the number of low-income and first-generation students pursuing and completing a bachelor's degree by providing comprehensive academic and college planning services. Currently, close to 200 students and parents of African American, Hispanic and Pacific Islander descent annually participate in FCE's programs. The foundation has partnered with the Office of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid, the School of Education and Stanford Lively Arts on various projects.

Planting for the Second Hundred Years is a partnership between the university's Land and Buildings office and Magic, a nonprofit educational organization that engages in diverse activities to promote health, cooperation and stewardship. This program seeks to enhance the integrity of the foothills ecosystem and increase the population of native oak trees on Stanford lands by planting native plants, mostly oaks, with the help of volunteers from the greater Stanford community. Magic also strives to provide opportunities for people who want to learn about ecology and native habitat restoration. Over the past 15 years, this program has established more than 1,600 healthy young oaks—utilizing more than 5,000 volunteers made up of Stanford students, faculty, staff and interested community members.

The Ravenswood Family Health Center (RFHC) is a nonprofit community clinic that provides primary medical care and prevention services for all ages, including the uninsured and new immigrants, regardless of ability to pay. Patients come from East Palo Alto, the Belle Haven community in Menlo Park and the North Fair Oaks section of Redwood City. The center's pediatric clinicians are provided under contact with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH), which partnered with the clinic since its doors opened in December 2001. Some 14,000 patients have been registered since then, and programs out of the health center have increased immunization rates in East Palo Alto schools from 25 percent to 100 percent. LPCH partners with the health center in various other ways to help provide additional services.

The luncheon will be hosted by the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto at 520 Cowper St. from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.